Women in Power

11     An insight is not old-fashioned just because it is a good thirty years old. On the contrary, this logic would make the denial of the gender-specific differences a modern issue. A conflict of interest - not of yesterday but of yesteryear. This was precisely the argument of leftist men and women in the sixties whose sole concern was the class issue - or more up to date - the social question.

12     In the 1970s, women reacted against this assumption, since they were tired of comrades who wanted to free the entire world but continued to exploit their own wives. We feminists proved that gender does indeed play a role in the ascription of roles, the exertion of power and the distribution of the world's resources.

13     In the West, all these ideas have been publicly discussed for decades. Women found political expressions for issues that had hitherto been belittled as "private affairs." "The private is the political" became a slogan which led - despite all machismo and sister fights - to a revolution in people's heads.

14     The case was totally different in the GDR. For forty years, people were told that the solution of the class question would automatically solve the gender question. Emancipation was decreed from above. Undoubtedly, this political past contributed to the first German chancelloress' double-edged innocence on her way to the chancellor's office. But whatever might have been the case. Now she has moved in.

15     Today, only about every fourth German man believes that "men are better politicians than women" (and only every sixth woman). Even among women, a culture of friendship, mentoring and networking slowly but steadily developed. Yet a chancelloress will only prevail if she is a real Trojan horse filled with fellow consorts: conscious women and humane men. For one Angie does not collapse the male bastion. But she has opened the gate.

First published in EMMA / Nr. 6 November/December 2005 ("Wir sind Kanzlerin!")